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User blog:Lord Dalek/The Buck, a story
This is OOG, and it is a bit of a story I wrote. Enjoy :P. ''Twang. '' The sound of an arrow flying from the bow rang out in the forest, it flying with a slight hiss to its motion. The target, a young buck, was struck in the chest, the arrow sliding into it between the ribs. The buck fell forwards silently, it’s front legs bending forwards before it fell onto its side, dead. The feathers protruding from the shaft, allowed the young hunter to find his arrow, and retrieve it from his kill. As he tried to pull the bloodstained arrow from the body of the buck, he sighed; the arrow was stuck fast. Giving it a final tug, he pulled the arrow out, grunting a small bit from the effort. He examined the arrow, the iron tip was still sharp enough to be used to hunt again - he needn’t sharpen it just yet. The buck was a small one, at most one hundred and thirty pounds, and without the skin and organs and bone, he would get maybe sixty or seventy pounds of meat, and some of that would go to the marketplace to be sold. Far from his best kill, but it would feed him well enough. He put the arrow back into its quiver and the bow slung across his back. Picking the deer up and wrapping it over his shoulder , wrapping it around his shoulders like some expensive fur scarf, he started his way home, walking through the dense woods that surrounded his house and about a half mile away, the village of Orchard. Both places were small, but his home was a lone building, the village a somewhat lazy place at first glance but, upon further inspection, pulsed with peasants working hard and long to make sure they lived each year in peace. He passed a small waterfall; the water flowing down it gently, into a stream that, in turn, fed into a lake. The rocks had become slippery and wet from the waterfall, making it hard for the hunter to traverse. After slipping a few times but never fully losing his balance, he continued through the path, which was traveled by many animals, and him. The often confusing path had never failed to lead him home, however, as he knew it well. The path was his most walked route, and his hunting there was good. By afternoon, he stepped out of the woods to be greeted by the sight of his house. It was a small building, light gray from the sun bleaching its wood. The surrounding fences were the same soft color, and through the slates, he could see that his crops of wheat and radish were doing well; the deer not getting to them like last year. He figured this was due to the skulls he had placed- the deer skulls on the fence scared them away. He walked to the door of his house, but, instead of going in, he laid the deer down upon the ground and loosened the ropes of his skinning rack. He slipped the hind legs in and tightened the ropes, raising the small buck into the air, its head staring downwards as the hunter went to retrieve his butchering knife. He slit the throat first, placing a wooden bowl under it quickly. The blood poured from the cut, pouring down the neck and dripping off of the buck at the chin, down into the bowl. Then the hunter stabbed the knife into the buck, cutting deep enough to split the skin but not to damage the organs. Sliding his blade down the deer, until he reached the bottom of the chest, where he stopped and placed his hand under the skin, and started peeling the skin away. It made a sickening noise as it peeled away from the muscle and tendons, the hunter taking his hands out from the buck’s skin, and grabbing hold of the right back hoof with both hands, twisting it downwards quickly to break it, the bone cracking easily. He cut off that hoof and put in on the ground, about a foot away from the bowl and buck, before doing the same to the other hoofs. Then he slipped his hands back under the skin of the buck and began skinning it again, peeling away the skin and pulling it over the broken leg bones. The buck was now half skinless, and he bent down, breaking the neck with a crunch. He cut the neck off, sawing at it vigorously until it too lay in the pile of hooves. Then he got back to pulling at the skin, it slipped off of the body easily now, and he placed it, fur down, in another pile to his left, of things he would keep and save. The skin could be tanned or sold. He looked at the body again, before breaking open the membrane between the skin and the organs, taking them out, cutting the ends and being careful to not have any of the contents spill on to the good meat. The pile grew larger, and flies began to swarm it, looking for a meal. He shooed them away from the meat but let them eat at the stomach and other organs. He placed the brown liver on the skin, intending to keep and eat it. He placed his knife on the bottom of the chest, and pushed downwards with his weight; as the ribcage split open with a cracking sound that seemed to resonate in his body as it did so. He cut away the lungs and the heart, placing the heart on the skin and the lungs with the rest of the organs. He wrapped the skin up and brought it inside his house, and took a shovel and carried the intestines and head and hooves away from his house, to let them rot. He looked at the skinned and gutted deer and sighed happily. Another day of hunting was done. He brought the body inside and prepared himself for supper, setting up a fire and striking it in a stone fireplace in his small home. The skin and deer lay on an oak table, with a single chair. A pot for stews and soups hung over the fire, his bed, beside the fireplace, was a fur covered bunk made of oak. He took the pot out and walks outside of his house, placing some more wood on the fire before he did so, and walked to the stream near his house that the waterfall fed, filling the pot with water and washing his hands in the stream before walking back to his home. He cut some flesh from the upper left leg, putting it in the pot to cook and serve as his supper. The hunter sighed, slowly eating his soup, bits of meat in it floating around and swirling as he dipped a spoon into it and drank the broth. His back was hunched over and the sound of a dying, crackling fire made the occasional pop, and the smell of smoke lingered in the air. He got up, after finishing his soup, not bothering to clean it up. He stepped out of the house, the wooden floor creaking as well as the door when he walked out. He looked around, the moon now rising, the sun with it, hanging on opposite ends of the sky. Like two orbs chasing each other in an endless game of tag. He did a silent prayer to the gods as he walked, thanking them, one of them in particular, the God of the Huntsman, Gil’tre. He held a piece of bone tied around his neck like a necklace as he spoke the words, thanking him for today. For the hunt, the kill, the clean shot. For everything he had done, he thanked Gil’tre. “Thank you, great huntsman, for allowing me to eat and live another day.” He said, realizing how little he talked and how little he heard the sound of his own voice. It shocked him, realizing how alone he was here, no one to talk to and no one to listen to. His friends all lived in the town, and he had not been there in weeks. He looked around his farm, and as he surveyed the pale, moonlit forest, and the slightly eerie atmosphere of this place, he promised himself he would go to town tomorrow, and bring some meat with him to sell. He walked back slowly to his house, and had the feeling of being watched one often gets when alone. He walked back into his home the noise of creaking wood greeting him again. He lay down on the bed and fell to sleep quickly. Category:Blog posts